Tweet

EMAIL

PRINT

Comments (3)

 1 of 2

Obsessed Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (sexual material including some suggestive dialogue, some violence, and thematic content) Genre: Action, Drama Theater release: April 24, 2009 Directed by: Steve Shill Runtime: 1 hour 54 minutes Cast: Idris Elba (Derek), Beyoncé Knowles (Sharon), Ali Larter (Lisa), Jerry O'Connell (Ben), Christine Lahti (Detective Reese), Matthew Humphreys (Patrick) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

What happens when you try to make a creepy stalker film, but the stalker just isn't very … well, creepy? That's the trouble with Obsessed, long-time television director Steve Shill's feature film debut.

Derek Charles (Idris Elba, who starred in The Wire and more recently had a brief stint on The Office as Michael Scott's cold-hearted replacement) is an up-and-coming executive for a financial firm. He's just gotten a promotion, and he and his beautiful wife Sharon (Beyoncé Knowles) are the proud new owners of a sprawling home. They're also madly in love, as we watch them in the opening scene flit from room to room enjoying some playful alone time before the movers arrive. Oh, and they've got a super-cute baby sound asleep downstairs. Life is good.

Idris Elba as Derek, Beyonce Knowles as Sharon

Enter Lisa (Ali Larter), a gorgeous new temp worker whom Derek meets the next day in the office elevator. You know she's going to be trouble within ten seconds, which is how long it takes her to conveniently drop her books and show Derek a little bit of leg in the cleanup process. Yes, the seduction game is on. Derek is none the wiser, though, sharing a bit of playful banter with her before heading to his office and moving on with his day.

But Lisa's back in tomorrow, only now as a sub for Derek's administrative assistant, who just happens to have caught a stomach bug. It's clear that she means business, taking every opportunity she can to put herself in front of Derek and enmesh herself in his life. She invents a break-up story in the break room to win his sympathy. She burns him a music CD. And at the office Christmas party (spouses not allowed!), she plays the role of awkward newcomer to win a seat at the bar next to him and liquor him up. Uh-oh.

Ali Larter as Lisa Sheridan

Shill says in an interview on TrailerAddict that Obsessed is meant to touch on the social dangers of the workplace, where seemingly innocent interactions between co-workers can be misconstrued by one party. That's certainly a theme worth exploring, especially in a time when workforces are as gender-integrated as ever. And it could've made this story a lot more interesting. But unfortunately, Lisa's character gets in the way.

I understand that, for a premise like this, your stalker character needs to be mentally imbalanced, or even totally unhinged. Lisa is all this and more. But if we're supposed to believe that she's formed a genuine emotional attachment to Derek, there still needs to be some space for this to take shape—a crush that festers into an obsession over weeks or months. Instead, Derek very much had her at "Hello." This renders any of his later interactions with her almost irrelevant, undercutting the interesting question of workforce propriety.

But more than that, it takes the thrills out of this thriller. Because yes, at the end of the day, Obsessed is aspiring more to entertain than to probe contemporary ethical issues. And if we could even begin to imagine the twisted world inside Lisa's head, we might be very scared of her and of what will happen next. But she's just a switch that's been flipped, more machine than human—and that doesn't get under our skin. Actually, a ruthlessly efficient Lisa could have been creepier. But her seductive efforts are painfully over the top, so we get the worst of both worlds: a clumsy robot, and with none of the charm of WALL-E. Sure, Lisa's weird. Deranged, even. But not creepy.

Derek and Lisa have a confrontation at the office

So what happens after Lisa and Derek finish their drinks? Before the night is over, she throws herself at him in the men's restroom, in a scene that doesn't show much but is still pretty sexually charged. Derek, tired and inebriated, still resists, extricating himself from temptation with almost superhuman effort, and not for the last time in the movie. Indeed, Derek is contrasted throughout the whole film with his co-workers for his marital devotion. One of them, who is also married, tells Derek that he would go after Lisa in a heartbeat. On a business retreat, all the men except Derek talk about getting lap-dances for the evening. But according to Derek, Sharon is enough for him.

next page... |  1 of 2 | last page